“Be good, for goodness sake” admonishes a splendid Christmas
carol. But that is not good enough. The confusion on moral issues is so deep
and wide that simple admonitions are not good enough. In order to try to bring
some clarity to the field, I will touch upon two issues. First, what does the
injunction to be good mean? Second, how can we be good? The first issue is
addressed here; the second in a next essay.
Originally published at www.spectacle.org/0712/gorga.html
What does it mean to be good?
To be good is a consequence of exercising all the virtues.
The virtuous man or woman is a good person. It is really that simple.
Yet, complications arise at every step of the way. What are
the virtues? Adam Smith succeeded in reducing them to one: prudence, which
dovetailed with his predilection for economic affairs and his penchant for
reducing the entire economic problem to saving and not
squandering one’s inherited fortune. He was, after all, the tutor of sons of
rich landowners.
Others, like Benjamin Franklin (sorry to say, since he is
one of the few heroes I still have), erred on the other side: He elongated the
list of virtues to such an extent that only mish-mash is left.
We have not simply inherited a basic confusion about the
classification of the virtues; we have lodged the confusion in very high
places. Theologians and practitioners at every level of this discipline have
found it easier to live with the dichotomy between God the Good and God the
Just than to resolve it.
Who dares blame the various branches of philosophy and sociology for sporting
a supercilious attitude toward the virtues—and for imbedding this attitude
deeply into our daily life? “Who are you to talk about the virtues?” “I am
Number One; therefore, I know it all; and no one dare tell me anything,
especially anything about morality. My ethics are at least as good as yours, if
not better. And do not tell me of absolute truths: There is no such thing. Only
people who want to boss other people around believe in absolute truths. Did not
Einstein tell us that everything is relative?”
To unpack this widespread attitude would take more than a
few pages. But let us go as far as we can, taking up the last misconception
first. Einstein was the master of relativity, not moral relativism. The two
have nothing in common with each other.
Individualism of the “I am Number One syndrome” is the bane
of our age. It is an unfounded assumption: We all live in a social context. And
the social context requires that moral issues be clearly understood before they
can be effectively practiced.
The elephant in the room is the assertion that there are no
absolute truths, and we shall leave this well enough alone.
The fear that people who assert absolute truths tend to boss
people around is a misconstruction of the social and historical reality:
Absolute truths, once established and practiced, serve the interests of the
many, because they put constraint upon the few.
Some implications of the separation of goodness from the
virtues
Since these are too many and too complex considerations to
be pursued, it is far easier to live in the state of confusion engendered by
the separation of goodness from the virtues.
Yet, we have to be aware of the dangers lurking in our
cultural condition. In its key function, this confusion leads us to believe
that to exercise any of the virtues is a presumptuous act. It is commonly
repeated that only people who are self-righteous believe they are virtuous; and
since to be virtuous is an impossibility given the natural state of the human
condition as self-conceited and sinful, we are all fallen people. Hence, the
righteous person is soon accused of being a hypocrite.
Given this cultural overhang, who dares to pursue the
virtues any longer?
To separate goodness from the virtues is the easy way out;
but that does not solve any of the difficulties with which we are faced. Let us
start again. Let us start from rock bottom.
The absoluteness of the virtuous action
The virtuous action is absolute. One action cannot be more
virtuous than another virtuous action; one cannot be more virtuous than another
person. Indeed, the virtuous man or woman does not invite comparisons; the
virtuous person does not feel inferior to another person who might feel more
virtuous. This is the bedrock on which we can attempt to reconstruct the value
of the virtues. Here follow some of the basics.
Why goodness has to be guided by the virtues
The good person is insecure and always tries to do better.
This is the classic case in which the better is the enemy of the good. The
virtuous person knows that he cannot do better than he is doing; that he
normally does the best he can.
The good person’s sense of self is
shattered if he discovers or is discovered doing a less than honorable act; if
he believes in the doctrine of incorrigibility of sin—as Father Merton
magisterially demonstrated about this practice by the Nazis—he is liable to
fall victim to malevolent people who will try to divert his actions to their
advantage. The virtuous person shakes the sand off his sandals and proceeds
along his way; he is ready to learn from his mistakes.
Goodness by itself invites comparisons. We thus, being
somehow unaware, accept the self-deceit of goodness. We cannot tolerate being
surpassed in anything, so we believe that we are always better than someone
else.
The chain of these insecurities intertwined with
self-conceits constitutes the slippery slope of goodness that inveigles us in a
worrisome trend, a race to the bottom. The evidence of this race—involving, not
the entire world, but most of the activities that are reported in the media and
some literature—is so clearly part of our daily life that we tend to accept it
as an inevitability and avert our eyes from it. Crimes become more and more
heinous; description of these crimes is less and less inhibited; visualization
of these crimes becomes more and more evident; sensationalism is rampant; cruelty
and embarrassment are lionized; mediocrity is exalted in our culture.
And these are petty crimes that yet hold our attention and
capture our imagination. Real serious crimes, crimes that affect the lives of
billions of people, are taking place in the field of economics and finance.
Thanks to the confusing status of mainstream economic theory, they are barely
understood and discussed. Mostly they are taken like natural disasters, caused
by impersonal laws of supply and demand, rather than consequences of purposeful
human action.
Civilians mangled in warfare and forced mass migrations are
just happenings; destruction of Indigenous People’s life is taken for granted;
genocides are barely talked about.
The issue of the deceits of goodness is topped off by the
dumbing down of the political discourse. This race from reality is a
result of two vicious circles: the control of the political process by the
media, and the control of the media and academia by economic libertines.
Why has this race to the bottom happened during the last
four to five hundred years of history? Some time ago it hit me as a ton of
bricks the realization that, deep inside, we not only believe we are good, but
even believe we are better than others. Hence the push to the bottom, so, no
matter how bad we are, we all believe we remain just a bit above every one
else.
The disconnect between goodness and the virtues
There are serious, not clearly understood, consequences of
the disconnect between goodness and the virtues. Goodness alone is not enough.
Goodness unguided by the virtues easily leads us astray.
Starkly stated, the two conditions are not symmetric: to be
virtuous is to be good; but to be good is not necessarily to be virtuous. The
self-conceit of goodness is such that some of the most heinous crimes have been
undertaken under the mistaken assumption that they were “good”. Did not French,
German, and Russian revolutionaries assume that it was good to eradicate
religiosity from the world? Did not Communist fanatics the world over justify
the slaughter of millions in the vain hope of eradicating poverty from the face
of the earth? Is not the genocide of any race pursued in the name of eventually
reaching the purity of some false ideal? Are not some of the most dangerous
scientific experiments pursued in the light of fabulous mirages at the end of a
dark tunnel?
From the tragic to the everyday banality there is a small
gap; but how many fall into it! The gap is opened by a cracked culture. The
“good” person can easily fall prey to sharpies and in turn pursue unjust
actions as well as advocate unjust policies. The world today is ruled by little
else. It should be sufficient to mention each and any policy of forced
redistribution of wealth. All good men and women advocate policies of
redistribution of wealth—provided it is not their wealth—or much of their
wealth—that is called to be redistributed.
The injustices of this prescription are so numerous that
they can be clarified only by pointing out that the person who calls for
redistribution of wealth plays God. The policy falls apart upon innumerable
practical decisions: from whom to redistribute, to whom, how much, how often.
The issues multiply as one investigates them. The proof of the pudding is that
the policy of redistribution is never satisfactorily applied.
The biggest shortcoming of this policy is that it lulls the
good person into self-satisfaction for his good advocacy and shifts the
attention from the real problem, the problem of just distribution of wealth as
it is being created.
This is an issue that I plan to investigate in an upcoming
essay.
Mr. Gorga would like to
acknowledge the invaluable editorial assistance received from Peter J. Bearse
and David S. Wise.
Carmine Gorga, a former Fulbright Scholar, is president
of The Somist Institute, a research organization in Gloucester ,
Mass.
Originally published at www.spectacle.org/0712/gorga.html
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